Fears of internet shutdown in Syria

There are growing fears that the Syrian regime could shut down the internet across the country, CNN reports.

There's little doubt that the regime could do so if it wished:

"Since it's state telecom that provides access, it's safe to say the government could turn the internet off at any point," says Doug Madory, senior analyst at Renesys, a firm which tracks internet data and intelligence and has been monitoring the situation in Syria.

"The outages we've seen in the last couple of months appear to be because of physical damage from fighting, or from power outages. They're short-lived, they flicker on and off. We've seen some internet being (purposely) disabled in more disruptive parts of the country, like Aleppo."

But some argue that the regime has reasons for keeping the internet running. "They're interested in measuring and assessing what's happening and trying to listen in, and even penetrate, and spy on activists and collect information," Fadi Salem, a Syrian scholar and activist, tells CNN.

4.52pm BST

Syrian army 'blocking its own advance' in Homs

Syrian government forces attempting to drive rebel fighters out of Homs have run into difficulties of their own making, according to a resident in the city.

Constant bombardment of the Khalidiya and Hamidiya districts has made many streets impassable – with the result that tanks cannot enter, resident Amer Ali told our colleague Mona Mahmood in a conversation via Skype.

After 120 days of siege and relentless shelling, no tank can get inside these districts in old Homs. The massive destruction caused by the planes and mortars has made it very difficult for the tanks to get through.

The Syrian army relies heavily on tanks in controlling any district. So, though the number of FSA fighters is not that large we are sure that the Syrian army can't take these districts.

Updated at 5.05pm BST

4.37pm BST

Britons 'to be questioned' about Syria kidnapping

The two Britons arrested at Heathrow Airport over terrorism allegations will be questioned about the kidnapping of a British photographer in Syria, the Press Association reports.

The man and woman, both 26, were held yesterday after arriving in the UK on a flight from Egypt. They were arrested on suspicion of travelling to Syria to support terrorist activities.

Scotland Yard confirmed that one line of inquiry was whether the pair were involved in the abduction in Syria.

Photographer John Cantlie, who had worked for the Sunday Times, and Dutchman Jeroen Oerlemans were both captured for a week. Cantlie later said that one of his captors had claimed to be an NHS doctor.

Hague's implicit confessions came in line with the divulging of the conspiracy hatched against Syria, not to mention the flow of international media reports which revealed the involvement of the US and some western countries in sending terrorists to Syria and providing them with military and financial support by some Gulf countries with the aim of toppling the Syrian state and spreading chaos.

Updated at 4.16pm BST

4.04pm BST

Battle for Homs

Residents of the besieged districts of Homs have made more pleas for help as they erect makeshift barriers to try and halt the advance of government troops.

"There is no way out. Our situation is so bad it makes anyone cry. The field hospitals are full of injured people needing operations and who need to be evacuated. There is no way out at all. We call on the International Committee of the Red Cross, and on the Red Crescent, to come to our assistance," said Abu Bilal.

Bahrain and the policeman's house

Earlier today we reported that four men have been jailed in Bahrain for partly demolishing a police officer's house with a crane. According to Bahraini media, the home of Captain Khamees Abdurasool has been attacked no fewer than 37 times.

It is unclear from the media reports why Capt Abdurasool has been such a focus of attention for protesters, so we asked Marc Owen Jones, a researcher on Bahrain if he could explain it. This is his reply:

I think there a number of reasons. I don't think it is that common for members of the security forces to live in mainly Shia villages. Many tend to live in Riffa, or Muharraq or a town near Awali specially constructed to house members of the security forces.

Also judging from the chatter, he is seen by many people from Eker as being responsible for the continued incarceration and "oppression" of the town's residents. People also say that his children (some say his wife too) are all employed in the security services, and their presence in the town is causing great problems for the revolutionaries.

Whether there is a deeper reason for the continued attacks against his house I don't know, though I think a combination of the reasons mentioned above is fairly plausible.

Eker is also a pretty radical place I would say. As I recall, it was from Eker where one of the most extreme videos from Operation Bahrain Fist emerged (townspeople successfully chasing away the security forces with molotovs, etc).

Egypt

I had never seen people be killed before Maspero. Maybe that is why I am regularly visited by the image of the APC that climbed over an island in the middle of the road and crushed the people in its path, of the way it slowly and serenely went up the October Bridge, while below it another APC circled under the same bridge and returned to the protest driving in a strange, zigzag fashion at a high speed, competently plowing into anything in its path. Panic-free.

Emir of Qatar meets Prince Bandar

The emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, had a meeting in Doha today with the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar.

The official Qatari news agency says they discussed "brotherly relations" and "other issues of mutual concern" (presumably Syria, where both countries are supporting the rebels).

Last July, several pro-Assad websites carried a report that Prince Bandar had been assassinated as a reprisal for the bomb attack in Damascus that killed several security chiefs, including President Assad's brother-in-law.

Updated at 3.04pm BST

2.37pm BST

Panetta says troops sent to Jordan-Syria border

US defence secretary Leon Panetta has confirmed that US troops have been been sent to the Jordan-Syria border as part of contingency plans to stop the violence in Syria spreading south.

We have a group of our forces there working to help build a headquarters there and to insure that we make the relationship between the United States and Jordan a strong one so that we can deal with all the possible consequences of what's happening in Syria.

Pentagon press secretary George Little, traveling with Panetta, said the US and Jordan agreed that "increased co-operation and more detailed planning are necessary in order to respond to the severe consequences of the Assad regime's brutality".

In a statement he said:

We have been planning for various contingencies, both unilaterally and with our regional partners. There are various scenarios in which the Assad regime's reprehensible actions could affect our partners in the region. For this reason and many others, we are always working on our contingency planning, for which we consult with our friends.

US defence secretary Leon Panetta talks to the media after a meeting of Nato defence ministers, in Brussels. Photograph: Thierry Charlier/AFP/Getty Images

Updated at 3.15pm BST

2.34pm BST

The battle for Maaret al-Numan

After three days' fighting, rebels appear to control most of Maaret al-Numan, a strategically important town in Idlib province on the Damascus-Aleppo highway. It was originally captured by rebels in June but retaken by government forces in August.

I just left Maaret al-Numan town an hour ago. There were eight checkpoints in the centre and near the Aleppo-Damascus road. On the first day, none of the checkpoints was liberated but tough clashes broke out between the FSA and the Syrian army. On the second day, the FSA with other brigades was able to liberate four checkpoints and then they [will] liberate others till they declare the complete liberation of the town.

Six or seven FSA fighters were killed during the battles, but the shelling by MiG planes caused the deaths of more than 40 people including women and children.

A four-storey building was hit by one of the explosive barrels dropped by the plane and levelled to the ground. People were hiding in the basement. There are still 20 people under the rubble – only six were recovered. There are no diggers to take people out of the rubble.

At every checkpoint, there were about 70-80 military men. Some of them fled, but more than 200 Syrian soldiers were killed during the three-day battle. Also, 20 soldiers were captured as prisoners. They are now at the prisons of the FSA. Some of them are wounded and are receiving treatment but they are under monitory for fear that they will flee.

These prisoners will be summoned to a trial. We have civil committees in every town. They have a judicial committee of lawyers, judges and clerics to give a verdict according to the Islamic sharia. If they find any of these prisoners was involved in killing, he will be killed too. Not all the verdicts are executions – sometimes, the prisoner will be kept in prison.

The day before yesterday, the FSA captured Colonel Ahmed Ruqmani who was in charge of al-Baladiyia and Mathaf checkpoints. He was trying to flee but he could not. There are eyewitnesses who testified that he had executed many people and committed a massacre. He even gave the order to shell the town many times. When the FSA captured him, they killed him at once.

Today the FSA captured other three officers of the Syrian army. Sometimes we exchange these officers with detainees in the hands of the Syrian army – for every officer, we take 10 detainees.

The video below is said to show fighting in Maaret al-Numan yesterday.

Syria-related terror suspect

Officers are probing whether the suspect, who was arrested at Heathrow Airport on Tuesday, is a doctor who took a sabbatical to lead a terror group, which shot and kidnapped a British photographer in Syria.

Iranian hostages in Syria are in 'good health'

The IRNA news agency quoted him saying "Thanks to God, all of them are in good health".

He said that Iran was in touch with Qatar and Turkey as well as the government in Damascus to secure the release of its citizens, Lebanon's Daily Star reported.

Vido from the rebel al-Baraa brigade showed Iranian prisoners at an unidentified location in Syria. The rebels had threatened to kill one Iranian prisoner for every martyr that falls once the rebels' ultimatum to release them expires. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Updated at 3.07pm BST

1.30pm BST

US-backed buffer zones in Syria?

The US is signalling to the Assad regime that it has contingency plans for what happens next, including potentially setting up buffer zones in Syria, according to analyst Shaskank Joshi.

Joshi, a research fellow at the defence thinktank the Royal United Services Institute, said the US could be prompted into setting up buffer zones in Syria if there were more cross border incidence and an increase in refugees.

A cross-border act of shelling that kills large numbers of Jordanians would be one trigger. The other trigger would be a sudden escalation in refugee flows and that could occur if we see a reintensification of fighting in the south ... if that goes back up and the Jordanians find they are simply unable to handle that number of refugees, that’s when the contingency plans for a buffer zone may kick in.

The US may become more “assertive” on Syria after next month’s presidential elections, Joshi predicted.

The US has told its rebel liaison outfits that ‘we are severely constrained before the US election we don’t want to take overly risky acts and we don’t want to provide weapons if we don’t know what happens to them’ ... There is likely to be an escalation whether from a Romney administration or a second Obama administration. The mood is slowly building up. But there is still no appetite for an armed intervention, even under Romney administration.

There is also a lack of faith from the US in the cohesion and integrity of the rebel Free Syrian Army, he claimed.

“That concern will still be there [after the election] and it will act as a very significant break on the types of weaponry that flows to the rebels even in six or eight months time,” Joshi said.

He related a suspicion/joke in the west that rebel groups were changing their names to more Islamist titles to try to get more help from Arab backers.

A task force of 150 specialists to Jordan represents a trickle rather than an escalation of US involvement, Joshi said. But he added:

It does mean the US is less likely to be caught off guard. It is an escalation in the sense that there will potentially be some US forces in harm’s way, although they will mostly be assisting with logistics and other forms of rear area operations ...

The Jordanian armed forces are very well trained but they would probably need more American assistance in protecting themselves against any escalation than the Turkish armed forces. There is a real concern that Jordan is a much more fragile country in political terms than Turkey - much less equipped to handle refugees ... at a time when they are cycling through various prime ministers.

The US is very concerned that if there is a similar escalation on the southern border of Syria as that which has now occurred on the north that it does not lead to political fragility and transformation in Jordan itself.

Updated at 3.11pm BST

1.28pm BST

Escape from Syria into Turkey

A wounded Syrian man lies on a boat as he is transported to Turkey across the Orontes river on the Turkish-Syrian border near the village of Hacipasa in Hatay province 10 October, 2012. Scores of Syrian civilians, many of them women with screaming children clinging to their necks, crossed the Orontes, a narrow river marking the border with Turkey as they fled the fighting in Azmarin and surrounding villages. Residents from the Turkish village of Hacipasa, nestled among olive groves, helped pull them across in small metal boats. Photograph: Osman Orsal/Reuters

12.53pm BST

Bahrainis jailed for 'crane attack'

Four men have been jailed in Bahrain for taking a crane from a construction site and using it to partly demolish a police officer's house, the Gulf Daily News reports.

One man was jailed for 30 months and the others for 12 months each.

According to the newspaper, the home of Captain Khamees Abdulrasool has been attacked 37 times – the latest incident occurring on 2 October, "when a mob stole four air-conditioning units and the front gate".

Abdulrasool blames the attacks on comments made by Shia cleric Sheikh Isa Qassim last January, "when he called on his congregation to 'crush policemen'."

Updated at 3.13pm BST

12.16pm BST

Another new prime minister for Jordan

King Abdullah of Jordan has appointed Abdullah Ensour as prime minister to prepare for a parliamentary election early next year, a palace statement said today.

The king dissolved Jordan's tribally dominated parliament last week, halfway through its four-year term.

Break from breaking news

Film-maker Christopher Bobyn makes the case for more reflective reporting on the Syria crisis.

He has just returned from the Turkish-Syrian border where he made a series of carefully crafted short films about life for Syrian refugees.

Speaking to the Guardian, Bobyn said he needed time to build up the trust of refugees to allow them to tell their stories, and then more time to edit the footage.

My goal was not to create the grainy YouTube videos but attempt a more documentary approach. With the weeks that I spent there I slowly gained the access that I needed, and was able to calmly make films that stand out differently from what’s normally being shown on YouTube ...

I think is important to provide that form of reportage because it allows a bit more understanding. Those films are crafted over time both in terms of their editing and understanding the content and in terms of slowly gaining access with individuals and with families and with communities ... That access allows for a better understanding. Therefore even in a three to five minute clip hopefully [it creates] a concise but well-informed and rich piece of documentary reportage.

It is meant to portray a piece of time and appropriate to watch at any time. So not breaking news, but a calm, sober, document of an event that took place and will therefore will always be important to watch ... to understand what the conditions and the zeitgeist along the Turkish-Syrian border were at that time.

He said there were heavy sectarian overtones at the funeral, but the main focus was the politics of the conflict.

Bobyn’s interviews with refugees suggested they had given up all hope of getting help from the international community, he said. They also felt a growing resentment to Turkey which is why many were staying outside government refugee camps.

Five questions from British ambassador in Lebanon

Lebanon is trying to fix a big problem – preventing the violence from Syria tipping it into instability, Tom Fletcher, Britain's ambassador in Beirut writes in a post on his blog.

So far, it is doing well, he says, but to give Lebanon the best chance international policymakers need to focus after the US elections on five key challenges:

1. How do we ensure that the Syrian state survives this Syrian regime?

2. How do we find a way to encourage better Saudi/Iranian understanding?

3. After a wasted decade, how can we establish the parameters of a durable deal between Israel and Palestine?

4. How do the west and political Islam engage with the right patience, principles and pragmatism?

5. How do we ensure that Mediterranean gas stops rather than starts the next conflict?

Deal with these issues, and with the right political will they are not all as difficult as we often make them seem, he says.

Updated at 3.16pm BST

10.44am BST

Turkey warns of 'greater force'

Turkey's military will respond with greater force if shelling from Syria continues to hit its territory, its chief of staff said today, as clashes between the Syrian army and rebels intensified along the border.

"We responded but if it continues we will respond with greater force," state television TRT quoted Turkey's chief of staff, General Necdet Ozel, as saying.

Several mortar bombs landed outside the Syrian border town of Azmarin early today and heavy machine gun fire could be heard from the Turkish side, Reuters reports, citing a witness. Reuters continues:

It is not clear whether the shells that have hit Turkish territory were aimed to strike there or were due to Syrian troops overshooting as they attacked rebel positions.

Scores of Syrian civilians, many of them women with screaming children clinging to their necks, crossed a narrow river marking the border with Turkey as they fled the fighting in Azmarin and surrounding villages.

Residents from the Turkish village of Hacipasa, nestled among olive groves, helped pull them across in small metal boats.

"The firing started getting intense last night. Some people have been killed, some are lying wounded on the road," said a 55-year old woman, Mune, who fled Azmarin and sat with several adults and about 20 children outside a house in Hacipasa.

"People want to escape but they can't. Many have settled in a field outside the town and are trying to come," she said, describing how she had helped ferry the children over another point in the river in a metal bowl used for wheat.

Updated at 3.24pm BST

10.14am BST

Libya motivated by revenge not justice - Gaddafi's lawyer

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi's lawyer has warned the international criminal court that any trial in Libya will be "not motivated by a desire for justice but a desire for revenge".

Maher, who as commander of the elite Republican Guard is the brutal face of the regime, lost a leg and the use of an arm in the attack, according to Abdullah al-Omar, who worked for five years in the press office of the presidential palace until he defected to Turkey last month.

Maher was flown to Moscow for treatment after the attack, Omar told CNN.

Omar also said that the press office was expected to "invent stories to justify the crimes committed by the Syrian regime". They also worked on trashing the reputation of figures who defected from the regime.

Omar recounted witnessing Bashar al-Assad kick furniture in frustration at how the conflict was being reported.

He would get very angry and swear, cursing the secret police and security forces saying, why can't they find out where these reporters are, capture them and 'bring them to me so that I can kill them.'

CNN points out that Omar's claims cannot be verified.

Updated at 3.27pm BST

9.19am BST

Migrant workers beaten by army in Lebanon

At least 72 migrant workers were beaten by the Lebanese security forces on Sunday night, according to Human Rights Watch, which spoke to 25 of the victims.

Nadim Houry, HRW's deputy Middle East director, who spoke to many of the victims on Sunday, said: “By engaging in such a nasty and possibly xenophobic attack against migrants, these soldiers acted more like a gang than a national institution."

Houry has been tweeting about the incident since Sunday.

Nadim Houry (@nadimhoury)

Just came back from investigating last night's events in Geitawi against #Syrian & #Egypt migrants. What I found is shocking. #Lebanon

Syria 'deeply depressing and frustrating' - Hague

There is no end in sight to the conflict in Syria, Britain's foreign secretary said today, despite plans for fresh meetings with the Russian government this weekend.

William Hague told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme there was no obvious route out of the current bloody impasse. PA quoted him saying:

It remains a deeply depressing and frustrating crisis. It is deteriorating and on current trends it will continue to deteriorate, leading to an even greater humanitarian crisis.

We continue our efforts to make diplomatic progress, including with Russia - I will meet the Russian foreign minister again this weekend, but there is no sign of any breakthrough.

In the absence of that we will be one of the leading countries delivering humanitarian aid, supporting the opposition in non lethal ways and helping with other countries to prepare for the eventual day after Assad when the Syrians will need our help all the more.

On the Heathrow arrests, Hague said:

There is some evidence there are people (here who want to join the fighting). We could strongly advise them not to do so.

On the general subject we are clearly very vigilant about this, about people either passing through the UK or British nationals who want to commit acts of violence anywhere, we are always vigilant about that.

But we also advise all British nationals to leave Syria, not to go to Syria, we don't supply ourselves anything that could contribute to lethal action inside Syria and we don't want individuals to do that either.

American officials familiar with the operation said the mission also includes drawing up plans to try to insulate Jordan, an important American ally in the region, from the upheaval in Syria and to avoid the kind of clashes now occurring along the border of Syria and Turkey.

Egypt

I had never seen people be killed before Maspero. Maybe that is why I am regularly visited by the image of the APC that climbed over an island in the middle of the road and crushed the people in its path, of the way it slowly and serenely went up the October Bridge, while below it another APC circled under the same bridge and returned to the protest driving in a strange, zigzag fashion at a high speed, competently plowing into anything in its path. Panic-free.